“”It takes a great deal to feed a growing boy,” Mother said. And she put a thick slice of birds’-nest pudding on his bare plate, and handed him the pitcher of sweetened cream speckled with nutmeg. Almanzo poured the heavy cream over the apples nested in the fluffy crust. The syrupy brown juice curled up around the edges of the cream. Almanzo took up his spoon and ate every bite.”

—Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy

Avid readers of this blog are more than aware that Chuck and I dined at Local Harvest Cafe last Monday for their “Little House on the Prairie” dinner, featuring pioneer foods from The Little House Cookbook. The culmination of meal was birds’ nest pudding, a fluffy cake baked around whole apples.

Birds’ Nest Pudding

Ingredients:

Butter, 1/2 teaspoon
Tart apples, 6 (about 2 pounds)
Brown sugar, 1 cup
Ground nutmeg, 1/2 teaspoon
Eggs, 3
Homogenized milk, 1 cup
Maple flavoring, 1 teaspoon
Flour, 1 cup
Cream of tartar, 1 teaspoon
Baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon
Salt, 1/2 teaspoon
Powdered sugar, 1/2 cup
Heavy cream, 1 pint

Directions:

1. Butter the baking dish. [A 2 quart baking dish will work.]
2. Peel and core apples and place them in dish. Fill the holes with brown sugar, pressing slightly, and sprinkle half the nutmeg on top. Place in preheated 350°oven to start baking while you prepare the batter.
3. Separate the eggs, putting yolks in a larger bowl and whites on a platter [I recommend another bowl]. Beat whites with a fork or whisk until they no longer slip from the titled platter [ie, stiff]. Beat the yolks until they change color; stir in milk and maple flavoring. In smaller bowl, mix flour, cream of tartar, baking powder, salt, and any remaining brown sugar. Stir this mixture quickly into the liquid. Fold the egg whites into this thin batter.
4. Pour the batter evenly over and around the partly cooked apples and return dish to the oven, baking it until the crust has browned, another 45 minutes to 1 hour.
5. While the pudding bakes, stir the powdered sugar and remaining nutmeg into a pitcher of heavy cream. Take the finished pudding directly to the table before it “falls,” and turn each serving onto a plate so the apple is “nestled in the fluffy crust.” Pass the pitcher of sweetened cream.

Makes 6 servings.

The cake was fluffy indeed, full of nutmeg flavor and chucks of baked apple, which were just sweet enough. It was an appropriate end to our pioneer meal.

“There was nothing to do but sit huddled in coats and shawls, close to the stove. 
“I’m glad I put beans to soak last night,” said Ma. She lifted the lid of the bubbling kettle and quickly popped in a spoonful of soda. The boiling beans roared, foaming up, but did not quite run over.
“There’s a little bit of salt pork to put in them too,” Ma said.
Now and then she spooned up a few beans and blew on them. When their skins split and curled, she drained the soda-water from the kettle and filled it again with hot water. She put in the bit of fat pork.
“There’s nothing like good hot bean soup on a cold day,” said Pa.”

—Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

And my recap of Local Harvest Cafe’s “Little House on the Prairie” dinner, featuring pioneer foods from The Little House Cookbook, continues …

I chose the vegetarian option for my entree course: baked bean soup with a cornbread muffin. The soup itself was wonderful, brimming with a wide variety of tender beans, carrots, onions, and a lovely light broth made from the liquid in which the beans were cooked. The cornbread muffin was dense, made only with cornmeal and water, but I enjoyed the texture and subtle corn flavor.

The Little House Cookbook doesn’t have a recipe for baked bean soup per se, but suggests that if you wish to sample bean soup as the Ingallses knew it, start with the following recipe for baked beans and tasting the broth. As the author of The Little House Cookbook says, “How good a soup it is will depend largely on how cold you are, and how hungry.”

Baked Beans

Ingredients:

Navy, pea, or “little white” beans, 3 cups
Baking soda, 1 teaspoon
Salt pork, 1/4 to 1/2 pound [Bacon can be substituted.]
Molasses, 1/4 cup
Optional: onions, 3 small, cut in chunks; green peppers, 2, cut in strips; additional molasses

Directions:

1. The night before cooking, put beans in saucepan or kettle to soak in water to cover (1 quart or more).
2. Next morning, change the water and simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in baking soda and watch it fizz. Continue to simmer. After about 40 minutes test for tenderness; when the skins of two beans held in a spoon crack as you blow on them, they are done.
3. Pour the cloudy yellowish liquid off of the tender beans, cover with 5 cups of fresh water and return to a simmer, adding salt that has been slashed to expose more surface. In 30 minutes this liquid will be ready to pour off, either to use in bean soup or to add later to the beans.
4. Grease milk pan [any oven-safe flat pan 12 inches in diameter and 3 inches deep] with the cooked salt pork. Leave pork in pan and pour in beans. If you are adding vegetables, distribute them around the pan. Dribble on 1/4 cup of molasses, add water or bean broth just to cover, and put in oven.
5. The baking temperature will depend on when you want to serve the beans. At 250°F they will take about 8 hours to brown nicely; at 350°F only 4 hours are needed. In either case you may need to add more water as the beans cook, since they should not dry out until the last hour of baking.
6. Serve with a small pitcher of molasses to accommodate modern palates.

Makes 6 servings and leftovers.

As with the homemade sausage that I wrote about yesterday, making cornbread in the 1800′s was also a laborious process, which included harvesting the corn from the plant, cutting the corn off of the cob, drying the corn, and grinding it into cornmeal—whether done at home or at a mill.

Cornbread

Ingredients:

Drippings or pork rind
Cornmeal, 3 cups stoneground yellow
Salt, 1 teaspoon

Directions:

1. Grease the skillet or bake-oven well with drippings or pork rind. Heat the oven to 400°F.
2. Mix cornmeal and salt in bowl. Pour in 1 cup of boiling water and stir. Add more boiling water, 1/4 cup at a time, until you have a stiff dough that can be shaped with the hands.
3. Divide the dough, shape it, and press it into the greased bake-oven as Ma did. Cover and bake until dough surface is crusty, 30 to 40 minutes. Cut loaves in wedges and serve warm with more drippings or molasses.

Makes 6 servings.

Since Local Harvest Cafe’s chef, Clara Moore, served the baked bean soup and cornbread as a vegetarian option, she didn’t use the pork called for in either recipe. I loved this dish the way she prepared it, but I can only imagine how great it would be with the pork. Hmm … baked bean soup and cornbread for dinner this weekend?

“On every side now the prairie stretched away empty to a far, clear skyline. The wind never stopped blowing, waving the tall prairie grasses. And all the afternoon, while Pa kept driving onward, he was merrily whistling or singing. The song he sang oftenest was:

Oh, come to this country,
And don’t you feel alarm,
For Uncle Sam is rich enough
To give us all a farm!”

—Laura Ingalls Wilder, By the Shores of Silver Lake

Tonight, I attended the “Little House on the Prairie” dinner at Local Harvest Cafe, and while I didn’t dine with Laura Ingalls Wilder (aka “Half Pint”) herself, I did get a lovely glimpse into the foods she would have eaten.

Born February 7, 1867, Laura Elizabeth Ingalls began her life in the Big Woods of Pepin County, Wisconsin. Her pioneering journeys began a few years later when “Pa” started his long search for a productive farm and a permanent home in the west. This journey continued for the next ten years as the Ingalls’ moved often, faced hard luck, hard work, and shared many adventures, which Laura recounted in her Little House on The Prairie books.

Local Harvest Cafe’s chef, Clara Moore, said the inspiration for tonight’s dinner came to her after obtaining a copy of The Little House Cookbook:

“Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series made a huge impact on my childhood, like it did for generations of young children. As an adult, I had all but forgotten the hours I spent reading about the Ingalls’ struggles, joys, and most of all, their food—until I picked up a copy of The Little House Cookbook by Barbara Walker.

Ma’s cooking played a huge part in the lives of her children, and Laura painstakingly describes every detail. From these details, and through tons of research, Walker recreated over 100 recipes from America’s frontier days.

This book struck a chord in me, inspiring me to think about the roots of American cooking and the simplicity of an old-fashioned meal. With this inspiration and Walker’s recipes, I am happy to offer everyone a seat at our “Little House on the Prairie Dinner”—where we will take a journey through delicious tried-n-true fare.”

As a young girl, I too was an avid reader—watcher—of both the Little House on the Prairie books and television series so as soon as I heard about Chef Moore’s dinner, I signed us up.

Here’s the menu that was served tonight:

Graham Bread with Fresh Made Butter
Lettuce with Vinegar and Sugar
Fried Parsnips with Hand Made Sausage
Chicken and Dumplings
Cornbread Muffins with Baked Bean Soup and a Poached Egg
Bird’s Nest Pudding

All in all, this was a thoroughly enjoyable and very interesting meal, which provided a surprising and delightful look at pioneer food. And since the history of these recipes is so rich, I’d like to delve into them more … so to that end, I’ll be posting one or two of the recipes—and my thoughts about them— each day. Stay tuned.